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My research shows that the Housing Board of Review ends in a favorable outcome for tenants 77% of the time, and I believe that if the Housing Board of Review tweaked a few of their requirements, put some money into education and outreach, the number of cases, and % that tenants win cases, would climb even higher.

Although information on the city’s website is fairly limited (someone may want to talk to our ‘transparency Mayor’ about that one), the data shows that when tenants bring deposit cases in front of landlords they are very likely to win a decent amount of their stolen money back from their landlord. One has to wonder how many landlords build into their budget that they will always keep their tenants’ security deposits.

Of the nearly 100 cases available online, tenants won 77 of them. 4 of those winning cases, or 5%, won double their requested amount for willfully withholding a deposit, and for 2 of those cases, tenants didn’t know that they could represent their roommates, so only 1 tenant won, meaning the landlord stole upwards of $2,000 from the other tenants.

Of the 22 cases lost, 6, or 1/4th, were lost because tenants didn’t know their rights and either didn’t show up or didn’t file within the limited 44 day window.

What needs to change to make the Housing Board of Review a more effective bulwark against thieving landlords?

Better outreach.The board sees around 60 deposit disputes a year. In a city with 10,000 units of rental housing, that number is abysmal.

Make it clearer to tenants that other people can represent them at the Housing Board of Review.If people understood their rights better, that they could have someone represent them, many more college students who move away could be better represented.

Allow more than 44 days for tenants to bring complaints, at minimum an entire year. This is thousands of dollars, sometimes a tenants’ entire savings being stolen from them with little recourse. 44 days is not enough time, especially if someone has trouble finding a new apartment/new job etc.

Make it easier to win double for withholding deposits.As more tenants come before the board, and we have more data about which landlords are keeping deposits, we should make it easier for tenants to win back double. Landlords should be conservative withholding deposits and should be punished when they continue to do so.

(You Can Read More About the Downtown Improvement District and Burlington Business Association here.)

When local government thinks and act like a business, everyone but business owners and landlords lose. Burlington’s Downtown Improvement District (DID) process shows that while ‘stakeholders’ and self-selecting and unscientific ‘focus groups’ may work for businesses, they are quite useless and even harmful for effective, local democratic government. Lousy and rushed public processes have become a hallmark of Burlington’s Weinberger administration, and the DID process was the ugliest process yet.

Just take a look at the list of stakeholders included in the 38+ person PUMA focus groups to see how these meetings were made up of predetermined interest groups, not a cross section of local residents. PUMA met with ‘stakeholders’, interest groups with power or influence in a system, while obviously excluding more marginalized and disconnected citizens.

Even the online survey was heavily skewed towards native-English speakers with high levels of wealth. DID supporters, including the Burlington Business Association, who sent out the RFP for the survey in a clear conflict of interest and blurring of government and business lobbying,touted this flawed focus group and survey as evidence of mass public support for a new business district. Yet there is absolutely no evidence that the 1,143 survey respondents, the bulk of collected ‘public’ opinion, were even asked if they supported a Downtown Improvement District.

The survey respondents were far, far wealthier and much, much older than the average Burlington resident. Those making over $100,000+ a year were over-represented by 20%, while those making under $50,000 a year, half of all Burlington residents, were under-represented by 33%. Young adults were under-represented by 31%.

” Mayor Weinberger, speaking at the Democrats’ party, said the DID expansion proposal marked a “very big change” that voters weren’t ready for. He said the authorization request left many details to be ironed out later, which made it hard to quell voters’ doubts. ” – Seven Days

The Downtown Improvement District is another in a long line of ‘public’ processes with very limited participation and predetermined outcomes. These processes are pinned on a series of lies that are designed to give the appearance of collaborative and inclusive democracy, while bowing to wealthy business and real estate interests. These lies further erode trust in our local government, further depresses daily civic participation, and leaves residents feeling powerless and disconnected from their own community.

Burlington is a strange place, where oftentimes we put more effort into appearances over substance, intentions over impact. This situation is best exemplified in the recent South End District Burlington city council race. While Jafar, a low-income man of color, was held responsible for his actions, Councilor Shannon, a wealthy white woman who has been a councilor for 16 years, has never been seriously asked to reckon with her hurtful votes and policy decisions, never been called to task for her own biases.

During this race the local press focused less on policies and experience differences, less on Shannon’s track record, and mostly on Jafar’s high school and college-aged private tweets, which had leaked to the press. These tweets, which were private thoughts shared among a small group of friends, were violent, vile, and misogynistic. It was universally good and important that so many people came out to publicly condemn these tweets, including Jafar himself, who recognized the hurt these tweets caused. Shannon responded to Jafar by questioning his relatively recent move towards feminism as a ‘position of convenience‘.

As a community we are great at rallying around and critiquing bigoted language. But when it comes to systemic problems that will cost us money and social standing, we regularly abdicate responsibility. While Councilor Shannon exemplifies this behavior, her position is not unique to Burlington or elsewhere. Mayor Weinberger, the City Council, the Democratic and Progressive Parties – all who have real power to make change in Burlington – have also done little in the past decades to alleviate systematic harm and suffering.

Councilor Shannon should be held responsible for her actions in the same way Jafar was held responsible for his – by her constituents and her political party – for her repeated and consistent inability to use her position to help vulnerable constituents and alleviate suffering. She should be held responsible for saying the politically correct thing but then quickly backpedaling to protect wealth, ignore the negative impacts of her policy decisions on marginalized communities, or both. The examples are varied and many.

And the majority of councilors and the Mayor have supported her action and inaction every step of the way.

While it is difficult to discern from Jafar’s single action whether his feminism is based on personal values or political convenience, Shannon’s 16 years on the council have made it clear she regularly votes for her own personal and political convenience. Isn’t it about time she is held responsible for wielding 16 years worth of power in a way that does little to alleviate suffering of Burlington’s most vulnerable residents?

What impact did Jafar’s private tweets have on this woman’s situation? What about policies Shannon has supported/ignored?( Front Porch Forum Post from January 2019. )

This is Part 4 of a 4 Part series on how Mayor Weinberger and the Burlington Business Association don’t represent regular Burlingtonians and are using their influence to push a rushed and rigged Downtown Improvement District that gives a handful of wealthy folks even more power at the expense of actual Burlington residents. Parts 1, 2, 3, are here.

The BBA is made up of very wealthy business owners and homeowners, many of whom have little personal interest or stake in Burlington, who care more about bringing wealthy tourists to the city than serving regular Burlington residents, while a handful of BBA Members have extra influence. The BBA doesn’t represent ‘mom and pop’ businesses or Burlington residents in any real way, and when they support the Downtown Improvement District it is not to the benefit of most Burlington residents and workers.

When one thinks of the Burlington Business Association, they think of restaurants, bars, and retail shops owned by Burlington residents. The truth is quite the opposite.

40 members, or 22% of the BBA, has neither a shop or home in Burlington. Think about that. 1/5th of the BBA has ZERO reason to be members of the BBA in the first place! For all we know, maybe they’re actually interested in helping their own community’s economy and sabotaging ours.

81 members, or 40% of the BBA, aren’t even based in Burlington. While they have a financial stake in Burlington, it’s hard to believe they’re equally invested in Burlington when their main investment is somewhere else; they cannot be as committed to Burlington as a small business owner living in Burlington.

Of the ‘Small Businesses’ that politicians and the BBA and their supporters love to fetishize so much, only 27% of small business owners even live in Burlington. Why is our city good enough for them to extract wealth from but not good enough to live in, to raise their kids?

When you think of Burlington, what comes to mind? Restaurants, bars, retail, right? It turns out that the BBA barely represents the storefronts in Burlington, the whole reason our downtown is doing so well in the first place. Only 22% of the BBA membership represents the service industry, while a full 56% of BBA membership represents tourism, other business organizations, businesses that support other businesses, finance/lawyers, and real estate industry.

These are businesses that aren’t small mom and pop shops trying to make or sell a product. These are large corporations, businesses that try to attract wealthy business partners, clients, or tourists. These are not businesses that support, nor are invested in, the vast majority of Burlington workers or residents.

On top of this, the BBA members who live in Burlington are extremely wealthier than the typical Burlington resident, with an average home value of $560k-$640k, 75-100% higher than the MEDIAN home owner, putting them into the top 10-15% of wealthiest Burlington residents. In fact, only 1 member who lives in Burlington has a home that is priced below the median.

Lastly, as a little quirk, the BBA has a handful of incredibly wealthy members who have multiple businesses registered to the BBA, thereby giving them more influence over the BBA agenda. (Oddly enough, many Burlington departments are members of the BBA in a very strange blurring of lines and potential conflict of interest.)

It’s worth asking if the folks supporting the downtown improvement district have Burlington’s best interests in mind, and why our councilors overwhelmingly approved a rush plan supported by wealthy business lobbyists.

This is Part 1 of a 4 Part series on how Mayor Weinberger and the Burlington Business Association don’t represent regular Burlingtonians and are using their influence to push a rushed and rigged Downtown Improvement District that gives a handful of wealthy folks even more power at the expense of actual Burlington residents. Parts 1,2, 3, 4, are here.

Folks who support the Downtown Privitization Plan will tell you our downtown economy is struggling. Yet what they don’t tell you is that while Burlington Business owners have seen profits grow by 20% in real value since 2008, downtown workers have not shared in any of those profits.

The many pro-business/anti-worker folks (along with the powerful Burlington Business Association) supporting the city’s rushed Downtown Improvement District, a plan that does absolutely nothing to meaningfully increase democratic participation or offer inclusion to marginalized voices, will tell you that this privatization plan needs to happen. They will offer the same arguments they used when trying to sell us the ongoing $22-million-public-funding mall debacle.

They will tell you that Burlington’s economy, and Church Street, are dying, and the only way to save our entire city is not by making sure everyone has enough money to afford basic necessities so they can support local businesses, but rather that we hand over even more control to wealthy non-Burlington landlords and non-Burlington businesses.

Why is it that Burlington is a good enough place for many of these folks to make money, on the backs of workers and renters, but not a good enough place for them to live, raise children, and spend said profits in?

The data, however, doesn’t support their doom-and-gloom claims for business owners (for workers and renters, that’s a different story for another day). In fact, Burlington’s economy is very stable and has been growing well (20%) since the Great Recession, particularly when we account for weakened unions, runaway healthcare costs, growing income and wealth inequality, and stagnant wages for most residents.

Meal, Rooms, and Alcohol sales have grown by 69% when factored in for inflation.

The picture is much less rosy when we consider Retail and Use taxes, which have been hit hard by many factors, including the problem that most workers pay over 40% of their post-taxed income to rent.

Sales and Use taxes have decreased by 50% when factored with inflation.

It looks like maybe the Burlington economy, while not a magical beast that can defy national and international trends of wealth inequality and global capital ravishing local economies, has been quite consistent.

The truth is that since 2005, when accounting for inflation, our economy has shrunk by 1.1%.

Since January 2009, Burlington’s retail and food economy have grown by 20% overall, so why again do we need to hand over power to the few folks who have actually made money since the 2009 Recession?

After my 3-part series last year on Burlington’s unrepresentative boards and commissions, I spent a good deal of time thinking about why that is the case and how we could change the process so that marginalized voices are included in our local government. This is list is neither complete nor full of the best ideas – I am after all only one privileged white male, but I hope that this can get you to think about concrete ways for our commissions to include marginalized residents. Of course, a better perspective would be to go out and ask those folks yourself.

1. Make the process as apolitical as possible.

The current process to get on a commission is a byzantine political affair where you have to apply to the position, try talking to as many city councilors as possible, then show up for an awkward interview. Then councilors from different parties then meet and trade spots on different commissions, regardless of whether the person being put forward would be the best person to offer an important and different perspective. It’s hard to tell how much the application or interview actually matters in the councilors’ minds, and it seems that the process is less about creating diverse commissions that can speak to the many diverse needs of our community and more about who is friends with whom and who is owed a favor for doing _____ for whichever party.

A very apolitical process? Make the goal of commission appointments about bringing a diverse array of marginalizes perspectives to every committee. (It’s as if there’s a whole bunch of diversity and inclusion initiatives that the city seems to regularly forget about.) Councilors should be excluded from the application process entirely, and recuse themselves if someone they know is applying. Then, councilors should be given completed applications without names or any specific references to who the applicant is, and councilors should to vote then and there who they want on the commission, while having to explain how the applicant of their choice meets the city’s goal of diversity and inclusion. Too often commissioners know the councilors and vice versa, making it all the harder for marginalized folks to get appointed.

2. Change the application.

Change the application so it’s easy to fill out online, is marked clearly on the city website (seriously try to find the list of open commission seats and what those commissions do from the city’s homepage), doesn’t require you to tell your educational background (unless those with less education are considered marginalized voices) and doesn’t require you to write in references (a way to make the process a who’s who affair, to signal that you are part of the ‘in’ crowd).

3. Advertise open positions, and put $ behind going out into the community to recruit folks from marginalized communities.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. If you want marginalized members of the community to apply, you need to do the work and seek them out and invite them in. This won’t be perfect, especially if folks don’t get on commissions the first time, but there’s clearly a need for more commissioners who aren’t wealthy and white to apply.

4. Limit the number of terms per member to 2 terms max.

Being on a commission shouldn’t be something you do for life. Unfortunately, there are no term limits in Burlington for councilors, mayors, or commissioners. One commissioner on the Parks and Rec commission has been on it for over 20 years. Get rid of the lifers so that every few years fresh perspectives can be brought in. There are lots of opportunities for others folks to stay involved, like joining the many fundraising sister organizations (Friends of Fletcher Free, Parks Foundation, etc).

5. Stop relying on private lawyers to do the work of our public lawyers, and hire more city attorneys if we don’t have enough.

When I looked at commissions in 2016 I found a startling statistic – 9 out of 21 commissions, or 43% of commissions, had at least 1 lawyer on the commission (one commission had 4!). Too often in local government we want folks to use their legal expertise to help commissions and city departments because we don’t budget enough money for city attorneys to do that work for us. It’s an argument that was heard often around Burlington Telecom, particularly from one elected official who is also a lawyer, Councilor Mason.

As the only attorney on the Burlington City Council, Mason regularly draws on his legal experience. During discussions over issues like new contracts or constitutional litigation, he knows the right questions to ask, guiding other councilors through the process.

The city, nor councilors, should be relying on free private lawyers to do legal work for the city, including councilors or commissioners who are also lawyers. That’s what paid professionals are for.

6. Civilian commissions need to be treated like civilian commissions.

Another big problem with many of the boards and commissions, particularly those with the most financial influence and power, are the strict limitations of who can be on those commissions. It makes sense that 1 person on the Church Street Marketplace Commission is a Church Street business owner, but if most members have to be business owners, that’s not a civilian commission; it’s a government-sanctioned business lobbying group. If every board is a civilian board, then nearly ANY civilian should be able to be on the board. And if citizens don’t have the necessary skills or education, then it’s the city’s job to bring commissioners up to speed, not pick from a handful of already knowledgeable residents.

The most egregious boards and commissions:

Design Advisory Board:

Members of this board must meet the following criteria:

“Should be residents of Burlington,” but at least a majority of the Board must be Burlington residents, 24 VSA 4433;

A majority of the members shall be professionals from any of the following fields: architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, planning, contracting, archaeology, or real estate development;

To the extent possible, at least two (2) of the members shall be professionals from the disciplines of history, architectural history, architecture or historical architecture.

Church Street Marketplace:

Members of this board must meet the following criteria:

All nine must be legal voters of the State of Vermont

Not less than five must be legal voters of the City of Burlington;

No more than four of the commissioners shall be from the same political party;

Two members must be proprietors or managers of retail businesses that are within the Church Street Marketplace District, but do not need to be residents of Burlington;

Two members must be proprietors or managers of retail businesses that are within the downtown improvement district, one of them being located within the downtown improvement district but outside the boundaries of the Church Street Marketplace, but do not need to be residents of Burlington

The Conservation Board:

Members of this board must meet the following criteria:

Be a resident of the City of Burlington;

Have a demonstrated commitment to environmental conservation;

Individuals with training and experience in the following areas will be represented if at all possible: environmental law, environmental science, civil engineering, and natural resource planning.

7. Even without limitations, powerful boards and commissions can still easily become heterogeneous, stacked with wealthier and more powerful residents, without clear guidance.

Development Review Board:

Members of this board must meet the following criteria:

Be a resident of the City of Burlington.

For some reason, even though this is the only requirement, the 2016 board consisted of: 4 Lawyer, 3 Architects, 2 Real Estate professionals, 1 Government worker.

Planning Commission:

Members of this board must meet the following criteria:

Be a resident of the City of Burlington;

No more than two-thirds of the members of this board shall be from the same political party.

Out with the old and in with the new. It seems that the door for folks who work for Mayor Weinberger will revolve a couple more times in the next few weeks. Recently hired CEDO Director Noelle MacKay will be leaving her position after just two years, and the mayor’s chief of staff Brian Lowe will be leaving after three.

It seems that those hired by Mayor Weinberger don’t tend to stay, and it’s a very troubling sign as we enter years 6-9 of his mayorship. Sometimes folks leave because they don’t mesh well with a community that has historically valued robust democracy and public discussion. It may have to do with the supposedly stifling and controlling environment in City Hall, where rumor has it that one former city department head quit due to our mayor’s numerous tantrums. What is clear, however, is that it’s hard to hire, or keep female department heads in this city, and this is a troubling recurrence.

“Weinberger deserves credit for recognizing the importance of the gender issue, saying, “We know we do better work if we have a good gender balance.” Yet since taking office in 2012, only three of Weinberger’s 11 department appointees have been women. A city leadership dominated by white men projects a distinct message, one that resonates loudly among people who do not see themselves among those who hold the power.”

Eileen Blackwood, Burlington City Attorney, 6 years. (Worth noting that Mayor Weinberger’s first pick was Ivy-League-educated friend Ian Carleton, who claimed he should be paid more because of his elite Ivy league education.)

On top of this, folks who work closest with Mayor Weinberger get rewarded handsomely after they’ve worked for 3 years under his tutelage.

His first chief of staff, Mike Kanarick, lasted 3 years and makes $132,000 a year at Burlington Electric, where he makes $10,000 a year less than the director.

Brian Lowe, his second chief of staff, also lasted 3 years and if his new job pays as much as when Anderson leaves, he will be making over $112,000 a year, a significant pay raise from his current $75,000 a year.

While it’s unfair to say that what Mayor Weinberger is doing is different than his predecessors, it’s worth questioning what sort of abuses are likely to occur when any Burlington mayor can hand out six-figure city jobs for their closest friends and advisers, and it leads the public to question whether these political patronage hires are the best employees for the job. You’d have to ask your local Burlington Electric employee how things have been working out – rumor has it that folks in BED have to work around Mr. Kanarick. An independent hiring committee and an independent ethics board, could help bring honesty and transparency to this issue.

It’s hard to look at Tuesday’s results and feel excited for the Progressive Party, a party with a very tarnished brand, a party that purports to help working and low-income residents, but is unable to actually attract said folks to their ranks. While Mayor Weinberger lost 15% in the polls from 2015, Progressives were unable to gain a single council seat, couldn’t field a mayoral candidate, and Brian Pine, a heavy favorite and moderate Progressive-ish candidate, was elected to a left-leaning bastion, where radical Genese Grill came close to beating Councilor Knodell only a year ago.

A large part of third party’s appeal is their unwavering commitment to their principles and strategy. Love or hate them, but at least you know their positions and strategies. Third parties’ influence comes from a small tent – a weakness and an asset – which limits membership but saves energy from engaging in lengthy battles requiring extensive internal compromise towards the ‘middle’. While third parties may have trouble winning statewide office, they can still affect change by being a party that works together and pulls from the left, without having to constantly compromise in ways that left Democrats must.

Atleast that’s how it should work. In practice, the Progressive Party over the last few years, particularly Burlington Progressives, have been entirely unable to agree on anything, and because of this no one knows what they stand for. Who wants to vote for a party that, when push comes to shove, say they support working class folks, but were perfectly okay selling city property to a known slumlord, and those who did object did so from the perspective of not privatizing city property, as opposed to protecting our most vulnerable residents from landlord abuse?

From entirely abandoning beleaguered Mayor Kiss, to disagreements about the mall redevelopment, F-35s, and civilian oversight of our police commission, Progressives are unable to vote together, are unable to put together a competing vision for this city that doesn’t involve isolated opposition, and are therefore an entirely ineffective opposition party. While I am sure that many folks feel that being an opposition party is a bad thing, that’s how a two party system works. If you aren’t in power and you want to regain power, you need to offer a clear competing vision. Otherwise, why would anyone vote for change if most of the time the ‘opposition’ is in agreement with the ‘establishment’?

On top of this, Progressive candidates running in Democratic primaries, along with many longtime Democrats like Tim Ashe and Phillip Baruth receiving the Progressive endorsement (D/P or P/D), not only confuse people on what it means to be Progressive, but also make it incredibly hard to hold any party leaders or elected officials accountable to the party platform. On top of this, the Burlington city party has put very limited resources behind new Progressive candidates, but will mobilize for more established and ‘establishment’ candidates (some of whom won’t even take the Progressive label) like Driscoll, Knodell, Pine, the latter two of whom were also supported by mega-landlord Bissonnette. I have trouble understanding how helping marginalized folks includes working with folks who mass-evict low-income residents.

Outside forces have also hurt the party. Bernie running for President as a Democrat, and Our Revolution primarily supporting progressive Democratic candidates, has quickened the party’s demise. The results from the Ward 8 election, where Socialist Culculsure and independent-left Driscoll won many more votes combined than the Democratic incumbent, but Progressive student candidate Neubieser lost handily to the incumbent ‘independent’ Democrat Roof, show that the party is in dire straights and even students would rather support nominally-independent candidates over Progressive challengers.

I know too many people on the left who have become entirely uninterested in the Progressive Party. If the Progressive Party wants to have a chance of survival they need to shed the older Progressives or those associated with older Progressives (Brian Pine, Councilor Knodell, Council Sharon, and anyone associated with Michael Monte and former Mayor Clavelle aka ‘the Clavelle Wing’, who openly supported Mayor Weinberger last election), many of whom refuse to share meaningful leadership and power with younger members, and they need to start putting priority in supporting newer, younger, and often times further-to-the-left candidates. Otherwise, they should be prepared to be in charge of a party that stands for little and accomplishes even less.

But what do I know, I was just chair of the city party for two incredibly frustrating years, and an unsupported city council candidate.

One of the symptoms of atrophying boards and commissions is that it is sometimes very difficult to fill commission spots with new faces. Whenever I talk to less political friends, they have no idea what commissions do or how to apply to be on one, and the Vehicle for Hire Board is a symptom of the same general groups of people applying for commissions and boards, especially when no one else knows about it. A couple things stand out.

Councilor Roof, who is an elected city official, is on the board. I don’t know if this has happened many times in the past, but it’s certainly a rare instance that blurs the line between citizen boards and elected officials. Since the other councilors vote on most Board candidates, this certainly feels like it could easily open up a conflict of interest.

Two members of the Vehicle for Hire Board are also on the Airport Commission. Wouldn’t city councilors want to ensure power and influence isn’t concentrated, even in the hands of individual citizens? And does this create a conflict, if those commissioner put the needs of the airport over the needs of cab drivers?

Vehicle for Hire Board

Member

Ward

Term

Email

Dennis Duffy

–

7/2018

Charles Herrick

–

7/2018

William Keogh Sr.

5

7/2019

Jeffrey Munger

1

7/2019

Adam Roof

8

7/2018

Airport Commission

Member

Ward

Term

Email

William Keogh Sr.

5

7/2018

Jeffrey Munger

1

7/2020

Alan Newman

7

7/2018

Pat Nowak

–

7/2018

Jeffrey L. Schulman

5

7/2019

Our citizen boards falter and lose credibility when we don’t put enough resources to help publicize to folks outside of the political establishment. We need a group of councilors committed to funding outreach to help include marginalized folks in government, especially for Councilor Roof’s Ward 8, since there are so few commissioners from his ward.

Correction: Councilor Knodell has let me know she is not a housing consultant and did not vote on Cambrian Rise. I stand corrected and apologize for the error.

The Inclusionary Zoning Working Group* is the sort of group that makes you want to bang your head against a wall. Approved unanimously by city council, it’s the perfect example of how our local politicians and government currently operate separately from constituents. The group consists entirely of housing developers and insiders, who meet 8 meetings during the morning when everyone is working, in class, or dropping their kids off at school. This group is a great example of a very noninclusive process decided entirely by political insiders – another example of our city using local experts for free advice instead of hiring outside experts who don’t have conflicts of interest.

Should we be worried about the the gaping conflicts of interests among participants, some of which I describe below? Should we be worried that we as a city are gladly letting insiders shape policy that will directly benefit them the most?

Who is on the committee? Local housing experts, as the council required. A City Council Member, who will chair the IZWG, 1 Representative from the Planning Commission, 2 For-Profit Developers, 2 Not-for-Profit Developers, 2 Affordable Housing Advocates, 1 CEDO Director or designee, and 1 Planning & Zoning Director or designee.

City Councilor Jane Knodell, a housing developer consultant with Monte and Davis (also in the group), who voted to segregate low income residents on the Burlington College development,

Michael Monte, CHT Director, housing developer consultant with Councilor Knodell and John Davis, who worked a deal with Farrell over the Burlington College Land, a deal that included entirely segregating low income residents into their own ‘ghetto’ building, supported the mall redevelopment even when it included a poor door entrance, and has advocating continuing this practice across the city,

Brian Pine, former affordable housing director of CEDO who worked under Michael Monte, longtime friend of several people at the table, small landlord, and supporter of the mall redevelopment even when plans included a poor door entrance,

Other attendees for the other 7 meetings include Erhard Mahnke, director of the Affordable Housing Coalition (and longtime friend of most folks in the room), and a visit by city councilor Karen Paul. Those are the only people so far, not working for the city, who have had any input on the inclusionary zoning working group.

This group is 100% political insiders – folks who worked together on the Burlington College project, folks who have worked together in affordable housing since the days of Bernie, folks who regularly work on public/private development together. All of them are developers or landlords or directly work with them. All of them are MUCH wealthier than the typical Burlington resident, particularly those who benefit from inclusionary zoning.

Who is not included in this discussion?

Renters

Anyone from Legal Aid

Any case workers from BHA or Howard Center

People who live in inclusionary zoning units

Anyone living in poverty

Anyone who has lived in unsafe or unaffordable housing in the past two decades

This is a working group created by industry experts. We wouldn’t want a smoking law to be decided by tobacco sellers and cigarette makers. We wouldn’t want our climate action plan to be decided by oil companies. So why as a city are we allowing this to happen? Why would our city council vote for this?

Thursday, March 8th, at 8am is their final meeting, and I will be there to share my displeasure with the process and what the group has decided on thus far – I hope you can join me.

*(For those who may not know, inclusionary zoning was created so that neighborhoods and buildings would remain economically integrated – the purpose is not to significantly build more affordable housing, an issue of great contention among the developer-class in Burlington.)